A Route between Two Continents
Who was Domenico Zipoli, and what does this composer and his music represent in relation to early music today? He was undoubtedly a peculiar composer. A contemporary of Bach, Handel and Domenico Scarlatti, he is difficult to compare with his contemporaries. There is no other case recorded in music history in which a sought-after professional musician renounces a certain road towards success in favour of saving the souls of the indigenous. His life was completely overturned by his decision to become a missionary in the Jesuit province of Paraguay, which substantially modified his language and aesthetic. The potential he had demonstrated with the publication of his first work, the Sonate d’intavolatura per organo e cimbalo (Rome, 1716), seemed to have largely faded. But nothing could be further from the truth, although admittedly the circumstances surrounding his decision to emigrate have yet to be resolved satisfactorily. These doubts perplexed musicologists of the stature of Adolfo Salazar or Isidor Phillip, who thought the presence of such a renowned composer on the inhospitable American soil was implausible.
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The totality of his output should necessarily be associated with the historical context and the events surrounding his rediscovery
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Zipoli’s socio-cultural environment is an indispensable factor in assessing both his radical course of action and the use of certain musical genres and characteristics in his compositional language. The totality of his output should necessarily be associated with the historical context and the events surrounding his rediscovery. Zipoli is the prototype of the composer who was a victim of his time and personal history. Caravaggio and Gesualdo didn’t transcend time because of their tormented personality or the unfavourable historical situation in which they lived, but despite this. On the contrary, it was Zipoli’s European-American itinerary that transformed him into an exceptional composer. His life and works, tied to the period in which they were composed, are uniquely fascinating.
Zipoli the European
Zipoli was trained more along sacred than secular lines and he maintained his distance from the main secular genre of his time, opera. He was born in 1688 in Prato, a small city with a long organ tradition situated approximately 20km from Florence. There he studied with Giovanni Battista Becatelli and at the age of 19, due to the patronage of Duke Cosimo III, he was able to travel to Florence to study with Giovanni Maria Casini and, later, to Naples with Alessandro Scarlatti, Maestro of the Chapel Royal at the time. In 1709, following a short stay in Bologna, where he worked under the orders of Father Felipe Lavinio Vannucci, he concluded his training in Rome with Bernardo Pasquini, a precursor of the galant style and Frescobaldi’s spiritual heir. One of his first professional commissions in Rome was for a Mass and Vespers in honour of S Carlos from the Santa Cecilia Congregation in 1710. His oratorios San Antonio de Padua and Santa Catalina date from this period, but only their librettos survive. Until he finally left Rome, Zipoli demonstrated that he was first and foremost a professional composer with a commitment to sacred music. His European career shows that he always wanted to work as a church composer. He finally achieved this ambition in 1715 when he was named organist and maestro di cappella of the Roman Catholic Church of Gesù, the Jesuits’ headquarters where the body of S. Ignacio de Loyola lies. Simultaneously, Maria Teresa Strozzi, Princess of Forano whose palace had become the most select and most frequented place of the artistic and intellectual ambience in Rome, also assisted him. In 1716 she paid the publication costs of his Sonate d’Intavolatura per Organo e Cembalo, the first page of which contains Domenico’s dedication to his patron. Composed in a conservative style very similar to that of Frescobaldi, it remains Zipoli’s most important work and that which has brought him the most fame. Extant works from this period also include the Sonata for violin and basso continuo and the secular cantatas Dell’offese a vendicrmi, Mia Bella Irene and O Daliso, da quel di’ che partisti, all for voice and basso continuo.
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